The Temporalities of Waste : Out of Sight, Out of Time

This book investigates the complex and unpredictable temporalities of waste. Reflecting on waste in the context of sustainability, materiality, social practices, subjectivity and environmental challenges, the book covers a wide range of settings, from the municipal garbage crisis in Beirut, to food rescue campaigns in Hong Kong and the toxic by-products of computer chip production in Silicon Valley. Waste is one of the most pressing issues of the day, central to environmental challenges and the development of healthier and more sustainable futures. The emergence of the new field of discard studies, in addition to expanding research across other disciplines within the social sciences, is testament to the centrality of waste as a crucial social, material and cultural problem and to the need for multi- and transdisciplinary approaches like those provided in this volume. This edited collection seeks to develop a framework that understands the material properties of different kinds of waste, not as fixed, stable or singular but asdynamic, relational and often invisible. It brings together new and cutting-edge research on the temporalities of waste by a diverse range of international authors. Collectively, this research presents a persuasive argument about the need to give more credence to the capacities of waste to provoke us in materially and temporally complex ways, especially those substances that complicate our understandings of life as bounded duration. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, cultural studies, anthropology and human geography. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Illustrations 9 Notes on contributors 10 Foreword 14 References 16 Acknowledgements 18 Introduction: Out of joint—the time of waste 20 The complex temporalities of waste 22 Materiality and ethics 25 Outline 26 Speed and slowness 27 Bureaucratic time 28 Disposability and persistence 29 Longue durée and intergenerational time 30 Collision and multiplicity 31 Revivals/return 33 References 34 Part I: Speed and slowness 38 Chapter 1: Open crowd: Just-in-time food rescue 40 Introduction 40 Expiration—matter out of time 41 Temporal ontology of food waste 42 Food rescue: tackling temporal enclosures 44 Breadline 47 Conclusion 50 Acknowledgements 50 References 50 Chapter 2: Fridges and food waste: An ethnography of freshness 55 Fridges, freshness and food waste 55 Doing fridge research with Pacific Islanders 58 Rhythms, fridges and shared households in Port Moresby, PNG 59 Rhythms, fridges and private households migrating to Australia 61 Conclusion 63 References 64 Chapter 3: Chip, body, earth: Toxic temporalities of Intel processor production 66 I Chip 67 II Body 68 III Earth 71 Conclusion 74 Notes 75 References 75 Part II: Bureaucratic time 78 Chapter 4: Biopolitical temporalities of waste and the municipal collection schedule in the United States 80 House offal and municipal collection: temporal, technical and human elements 82 Enacting the temporal grid of compliance for municipal waste collection 85 Producing wasted spaces: areas never visited and areas of disposal 90 Conclusion: toward new temporalities of waste 92 Note 93 References 93 Chapter 5: Housing waste in remote Indigenous Australia 94 Repair, waste, time 95 Legal protections for habitable housing 99 Policy, classification, waste 102 References 103 Chapter 6: The imaginaries of Beirut’s “invisible” solid waste: Exploring walls as temporal pauses amidst the Beirut garbage crisis 106 Introduction 106 The background 109 Temporary tactics 110 The wall as temporal pause 112 Conclusion 119 Acknowledgements 120 Note 120 References 120 Online newspaper articles 121 Part III: Disposability and persistence 124 Chapter 7: “All of them had been forgotten”: Waste as literary symbol in the Arab world 126 Exception in the permanently temporary refugee camp 128 (Un)grievable lives and stalled journeys 131 Slow violence and the accumulating waste of war 134 Conclusion 137 References 138 Chapter 8: Lingering matter: Materialities, temporalities and waste in clothes 141 Introduction 141 Pulling the thread: tracing outwards from the temporary assemblages of clothing 143 Component materials that endure: temporal vignettes of unruly3 clothing assemblages 144 Concluding thoughts 150 Notes 151 References 152 Chapter 9: The landfill paradox: Reflections on the temporalities of waste 155 The rhythm of waste: dumping narratives 156 Arriving at the landfill: locked up waste 158 The structure 159 Caring about leaks: landfill futures 162 Conclusion 164 References 164 Part IV: Longue durée and intergenerational time 168 Chapter 10: The waste of time 170 Introduction 170 Waste as an end and a beginning 170 Digging up dirt 171 The past over the present 172 Nature over culture 173 The research at Marco Gonzalez 175 Impact 179 Conclusions 181 Acknowledgements 181 References 181 Chapter 11: Crip Time and the toxic body: Water, waste and the autobiographical self 186 Introduction: the Crip Time of climate change 186 Part I: Black(stone) River 188 Part II: Great Green(algae) Lake(s) 190 Part III: Red(scare) ground water 193 Conclusion—Crip Time, slow violence and toxic water 194 Notes 195 References 196 Chapter 12: Wasting seas: Oceanic time and temporalities1 198 Timelines 198 Interwoven time 199 Mercurial time 203 Folded geo-temporalities 206 Notes 207 References 208 Part V: Collisions and multiplicity 212 Chapter 13: Today’s waste is tomorrow’s future: On the temporalities of two post nuclear sites1 214 Writing into the future 215 Chernobyl: the never-ending richness of catastrophe 217 The Hanford Nuclear Reservation: the toxic cycle of life 223 The end is far away 226 Note 227 References 227 Chapter 14: Toxic transmogrification: Rare Earthenware as junk art 230 Trash and e-waste art 231 Waste, temporality and the power of objects 233 The ethical dimensions of waste 234 Note 241 References 241 Chapter 15: Crunch time: Temporalities of scrap metal collection 243 Introduction 243 Literature review 244 Note on method 246 Analysis 246 Conclusion 252 References 253 Part VI: Revivals and returns 256 Chapter 16: New temporalities of everyday life in Australian suburbia: Cultural and material economies of hard rubbish reuse 258 Introduction 258 Temporal norms of convenience and disposability 259 The emergence of new temporalities 260 Changing times: hard rubbish households 261 Conclusion: a temporal politics 267 Acknowledgements 269 References 269 Chapter 17: Temporal cycles of waste management in Southern African Indigenous societies 272 Introduction 272 Indigenous waste management practices 273 From waste to food: traditional food production systems 274 Going back to go forward towards sustainability: relearning the traditional practices of urban organic waste recycling and food gardening 276 Application of Indigenous temporal cycles of waste in the formal school curriculum 277 Case 1: Urban organic waste recycling: uncovering the heritage foundations of organic waste management in Makhanda 278 Case 2: A colonial history of exclusion as a foundation for a new temporality of waste management 278 Conclusion 279 References 280 Index 283 "This edited collection addresses the need for ongoing empirical study of and critical reflection on the temporalities of waste in the context of sustainability, materiality, social practices, subjectivity, and environmental challenges. Its contributions are attuned to the multiple temporalities of waste, its circulation and transformation as part of discourses of creative reuse and sharing economies, as well as the ways in which waste lingers and does not move according to cyclical logics and temporalities. Waste is one of the most pressing issues of the day, central to environmental challenges and the development of healthier and more sustainable futures. There is now a large body of research on waste-related topics in existing disciplines like sociology, economics, history, marketing and business, as well as a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of Discard Studies. The emergence of this new field is testament to the centrality of waste as a crucial social, material and cultural problem and to the need for multi- and transdisciplinary approaches like those provided in this volume. This edited collection responds to such concerns, seeking to develop a framework that understands the material properties of different kinds of waste, not as fixed and static but as transformative and relational. It brings together new and cutting-edge research on the temporalities of waste by a diverse range of international authors. Collectively, this research presents a striking and persuasive argument about the need to give more credence to the capacities of waste to provoke us in materially and temporally complex ways, especially those substances that complicate our understandings of life as bounded duration. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, cultural studies, anthropology and human geography"-- Provided by publisher